web of deceit

This has certainly been the experience of many. It looks inviting. But they didn’t realize it was going to cost them their souls. They also couldn’t predict how difficult it was going to be to extricate themselves from it.

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Jesus himself warned us about preachers that tickle people's ears and tell them what they want to hear.

Thanks be to God there are still some churches left (not very many though) who preach a pure gospel and focus on the work of Christ for real sinners, instead of a sickly man-made spirituality/religious project.

How does one find the church then that preaches a "pure" gospel? I have been looking and am sad to say that,despite being populated by many well meaning,sincere people,they end up looking and acting like the entity portrayed in this drawing.

The church-structured too often tries to control the Wind, and the Wind of the Spirit simply cannot be stopped.

So, when the Spirit raises up two new pastors in the midst of the church-structured, the appointed pastor may be alarmed, rather than rejoicing. He may even become jealous, as the new pastors walk in humility better than he. He may wish to even discourage one of the new ones - for she is a woman.

A church that wishes to stay vibrant, must be willing to change its webbing whenever the Spirit flows in a new direction... and the threads of its web should be quite releasable and not holding on forever.

@ Steve Martin - "pure gospel" according to who? To you, Martin Luther, and the other pure Lutherans out there? (But surely not the rogue Lutherans who allow gays to be pastors??) Yours sounds like a "web of conceit."

When you study how sick Christian church fathers were you can begin to understand how any gospel is not good news at all. It is the product of fearful obsessive 1st century crazy people. These are the thought leaders that formed the basis for modern Christianity.

The only reason we still give it any attention is because of threats of eternal death that people continue to teach from one generation to the next.

That is why no church will have anything that is pure. The foundation has always been fear.

Richard: I offer that the foundation is Jesus. And, as Paul wrote, there can be no other foundation (but every man should take heed how he builds thereon).

Thus, every pastor/leader of every church has an opportunity to rebuild Christ upon the foundation. The weight given to the 'early fathers' layer built upon that foundation ranges from much to nil, depending on the denomination and leader.

The foundation has always been Jesus: touching a leper; commending the faith of a Roman military man; touching a sick woman; and reaching out to the demon-owned. Those that avoid the leper, or hate the lifestyle of 'the others', or avoid cross-gender communications/dialog, or run away from getting to know those they believed are demon-deceived... those people are not building Christ.

I ignore much of the history of the church. I pay the 'church' little attention. And, I hope I build the 'real Christ' upon the foundation He planted in my heart.

Good distinction Caryn. Though I would add that the foundation of the church, as in the the body of believers, is indeed Christ. But the institution of the church as represented by the christian religion is built upon layer after layer of man made fallacy...much of which has made its way into many of the doctrinal beliefs most declare.

I don't really know what it means to have Jesus as the foundation since Jesus uses fear at times. If you have a way in which a person can have an alternative to Jesus then maybe fear would cease to be a factor.

As long as you have only one choice for life, you have fear built in. You may be able to look past this contradiction, but it is still there.

The other myth, and I don't know if you believe this, is that there was this pure church at some time in the beginning and it got corrupted. There is no evidence for this what-so-ever. And knowing human nature I would say that it was highly unlikely.

I find simply using empathy and reason to be far more effective in creating healthy communities. It bypasses all the decoding of the Bible and other tangents that pollute human relationships.

When we finally come to accept and internalize and act upon God as unrestrained love and unconditional grace as a way of life and not a theology, then that is when our old selves die and we are resurrected as a transformed being - a child of God and a citizen of the Kingdom of God.

This is usually not so much a lightning-struck moment as a long metamorphosis. A consequence of which is the way in which it backwashes(cleanses?) our view of and relationship with God. No longer is God a wrathful God of binary judgment and eternal vengeance. That is what died on the cross. Jesus did not die for us, Jesus died for God. What was resurrected on Easter morning was a God of unrestrained love and unconditional grace that was evangelized as stories about Jesus.

What you describe as "unrestrained love and unconditional grace as a way of life" is exactly what I experienced once I left the church. The church is in the way of this because is required to take this natural outcome and codify it within a fairly narrow religious narrative.

Church comes with the assumption that everyone needs to be fixed.

The truth is people just need room to grow and knowledge about life.

There is something useful in your narrative for me. That binary god did die, only I didn't need a new improved god to be raised from the dead in that god's place.

Granted, there are things and people greater than me in this life. The difference is those who are greater than me don't ask me to worship them. Their goal for me is independence and self reliance. That is the evidence of their greatness.